Every small town has that one urban legend that everyone knows about and that has a few different variations. However, urban legends tend to have some truth to them, regardless the number of variations it may have or how far it has been strayed from its origins. I learned that the hard way. Let me back up a little bit, say oh…. 5,6 years? Yeah, it’d be somewhere around that and tell you about my experiences.
When I was 16 years old I lived in a small sleepy farming town in Missouri called Harrisburg in the middle of August, it was your typical small rural American town. Churches on every block, gas station that doubled as a diner, Elementary School and the Middle school were one building and the high school was its own building and there was a general store as the main store whereas other places would have Wal-Mart or something along those lines. Aside from the old Lion’s Club there was nothing notable about the town. Me, my parents and my siblings moved to this sleepy town to get away from a bad neighborhood in Billings Montana. I for one welcomed the change. Finally, I wouldn’t have to carry a pocket knife on me when I walked home from school, just in case I was to bump into the wrong type of person. And I was really looking forward to not having my father have to call the police whenever he discovered some homeless person sleeping in my old childhood treehouse.
We moved in an old house at the edge of the woods and I was given the basement all to myself and was given a water bed to sleep on. I got all my boxes and went about marking my territory shall we say by setting up my room and hooking up my Playstation 3 and TV in a separate room in the basement, turning it into a game room. I loved living within footsteps of the vast woods and would spend a lot of time in there. I am an avid outdoorsman after all. I love hiking, camping, fishing, and hunting and man was there plenty of deer in those woods! To make things even better, my uncle lived just down the gravel road from us who had access to a pond. The remainder of my summer was spent either talking long walks in the woods or fishing at my uncle’s. However, all things must come to an end and I woke up one day having to get ready for my first day at a new school. I got up and got ready for school before telling my parents goodbye and went to wait to get on the bus.
After arriving at my new school and finding my way through my first class I had to do the age-old tradition of introducing myself to the class. I’ve never had a problem with public speaking before, I’m actually very outgoing and friendly. So I spoke boldly, stating who I was, where I was from, blah blah blah. After taking my seat I met a guy named Kale who mentioned he had an uncle that lived in Dillion Montana. As the teacher gave her lesson me and Kale had a conversation via passed notes. The day flew by and before I knew it, it was time for lunch. After grabbing my food I looked around for somewhere to sit. Luckily Kale spotted me and waved me over to his table. With him were a few other guys and a couple girls that Kale introduced as Trey, Cody, Travis, Kate, and Brittney. I introduced myself to them and we spent our lunch hour talking about random things before the bell rang.
After school Kale decided to show me the rest of the town. For the most part there was nothing of interest. That is until we walked by an old three-story yellow farmhouse with a barn that was falling apart nearby. ” Hey, does anyone live there?” I asked pointing to it. Kale’s eyes followed my finger and an odd look flashed across his face. It was almost like… like he was scared of it. ” No” he said quickly. ” No one lives there.” I looked at him ” you sure?” ” Yeah, I’m sure. Now let’s go!” he said seemingly in a hurry to leave. ” Wait, hold on a minute” I said walking closer to the house. “Hey, what are you doing?!” Kale asked angrily. I ignored him as I walked to the front door, and saw a scorpion engraved on the door. I studied it, sure it had to have some sort of meaning when Kale grabbed my arm and pulled me away from the door ” Hey!” I demanded glaring at him. Kale ignored me as he hauled me away from the house before he let go of my arm. ” You don’t want to go there dude” he said. ” Why not? It’s just an old house” I said. ” It’s NOT just an old house” Kale said, shooting it an uneasy look. ” What do you mean?” I asked.
Kale sighed ” that’s The Witch’s House. Back when the original settlers inhabited this town, there was a woman who would kidnap people and use them as sacrifices for satanic rituals in her barn. She would then grind up the bodies of her victims and feed them to her bulldogs. When it was discovered she was doing that, the townspeople chased her down and burned her at the stake. Before she died she screamed a curse at the townsfolk, saying that her spirit would forever be tied to the town and would forever haunt the citizens of Harrisburg. Only thing is after she died people still continued to go missing. Their bodies would turn up a few days later in the barn. ” Well, what about the scorpion engraved on the door?” ” That’s her mark. She would engrave a scorpion I chuckled and rolled my eyes “That’s a nice urban legend. You should make yourself a YouTube account and tell that story, maybe have some gameplay in the background. I hear that works out for people.” ” It’s not funny man! Anyone who goes in that house never makes it out alive.” I just shrugged it off and agreed to leave when I saw the scared look on Kale’s face, chalking the whole thing up to nothing more than local superstition.
We concluded our tour by one of the various churches in the town which had a large cemetery nearby. This intrigued me, to be honest. It didn’t seem likely that a cemetery of that size could be for the sleepy town of Harrisburg. I crossed the street and began to examine the headstones. As I read the names and dates, I was surprised to see that most of the people laid to rest there were about my age. I was soon joined by Kale ” hey, why are so many people our age buried here?” I asked. Kale didn’t say anything at first but he had that same odd look from when we were talking about the house before. ” There’s a gang of people in the nearby city of Columbia that target young people and kill them.” ” What the hell, why?” I asked. ” No one really knows. One thing you’ll learn while you live here is that Columbia is a shit hole. Be glad you don’t live there. I recommend never going there alone, just to be safe.” I assured him that I knew how to handle big cities, having moved from one. We said our goodbyes and went our separate ways.
We lived in that little town for a year and honestly it was one of the best years of my life. The football and basketball teams I was on went all the way to their respective State Championships and won, I made a lot of friends, and I really enjoyed my classes. Summer passed quickly and before I knew it I was a few weeks in my Junior year of High School. In my history class, I was assigned to write a research paper on the history of the town. I groaned with the class, it was a small farming community in middle America, how exciting could the history be? I resigned myself to a few weeks of boring research and after school, I reluctantly dragged myself to the library and started looking at the history books of the town. The only thing I could find that was research worthy was how the name of the county Harrisburg was in, Boone was named after Daniel Boone. I almost decided to research that when I decided to look through one more book. I flipped to a random page and raised an eyebrow when I saw the name of the chapter’s title.
Witches
I read the contents of the chapter getting more and more interested. One of the accounts I read even talked about the story Kale had told me when he had shown me the town. I bookmarked the page and signed on to a computer. I started on the first paragraph on my paper, using all the information I could from the chapter. When I had used all the information I could I looked for other books I could use. For the next three days I did some heavy research in the school library hardly daring to believe what I was reading. Apparently, the town I had called home for the past year had a deep history of witchcraft of some kind, the latest case being ten months ago. Ten months? I was living here then! I was living in a town where people practiced witchcraft?! After more research, I discovered the original witch would grind up her victims and feed them to her bulldogs. Because of that people started raising bulldogs as that seemed to protect them from the witch’s wrath. That’s why our school mascot was a bulldog.”The librarian walked past my screen and did a double take at my screen. For some reason, I found myself in the school office. The principal had given me a two-week suspension from the library computers for looking up inappropriate subject matter. I tried to explain I was doing it for a research paper but my argument fell on deaf ears.
Things got strange from there. All my friends started avoiding me and even the teachers treated me differently. I thought this was quite odd. Seriously, it’s not like I got caught looking at porn! I continued to work on my paper, finishing it a week early. To celebrate I went to the diner in town and ordered myself a pizza and a two-liter bottle of A&W Rootbeer. As I was waiting for my order to be completed I noticed a group of older people looking at me and whispering. In fact, everyone in the diner was. Even the Police officers that were there were doing this. Feeling creeped out I grabbed my order and hurried to my father’s pickup I had borrowed to grab my dinner as I didn’t have my own car back then. I frowned when I saw a drawing on the hood of a scorpion. I rolled my eyes and backed out of the parking lot, assuming someone was messing with me who know about my research paper. The following night was something known as September Fest, a night where the whole town would come out to wish the varsity football team luck with their upcoming season. There were all kinds of carnival games and food stands everywhere. So needless to say it was a fun time as people wished me luck as I walked around the event, admittedly a little cockily wearing my red and white football jersey.
After September Fest had concluded I went to a team mate’s farm for a bonfire where I admit, I had a lot to drink, causing me to pass out. When I awoke I was in a decrepit bedroom, my arms and legs bound. I struggled, trying to figure out what was going on. The bedroom door open and someone wearing a black cloak and white mask walked in and just stared at me. The odd thing was I wasn’t scared. Rather I was convinced that this was just some joke one of my teammates was playing on me. ” Okay fucker, good one. Let me go” I said with a smile. The figure said nothing, just staring at me. ” Seriously, you got me. You can cut it out now” I said, my amusement starting to fade to be replaced by annoyance. The figure held up a dagger and walked towards me. My eyes widened in shock as the figure slowly slid the dagger across my cheek, causing me to yell in pain. ” What the fuck?!” I demanded, blood rushing down my cheek. ” You have looked into things that you had no business in looking in to. So, to appease our goddess you will be sacrificed” the figure said. That voice, where had I heard it from?
The figure left the bedroom, leaving me to my thoughts. I had to get out of here, I had to find a way to escape. That night I was gagged and grabbed by two figures wearing cloaks and masks. I tried to struggle to get loose but it did no good. They dragged me outside and started dragging me to an old barn. Wait… “there was a woman who would kidnap people and use them as sacrifices for satanic rituals in her barn” I recalled Kale telling me. Ah no way. No fucking way! I thought, putting the pieces together. This had to be the practicing witches I had researched when writing my paper! Now the drawing of the scorpion on my dad’s pickup made sense, that was their way of telling me they were coming for me. They dragged me into the barn where I saw others waiting around a pentagram, candles lit. Dried blood was everywhere on the floor. They all wore cloaks and masks. I tried screaming for help as they forced me to the center of the pentagram and unbound my legs and arms. They secured my flailing limbs and pinned them down to the pentagram with duct tape. The people started chanting in some language I couldn’t understand as I desperately tried calling for help.
One of the people knelt beside me, holding a dagger I could only watch as several cuts were made near my veins. The people participating in the ritual left the barn single file as I began to bleed to death. I felt my eyes begin to close. Help me I thought as my eyes closed.
I awoke in the hospital, hooked up to an IV machine. I was told that the police had found me bleeding and bound to a pentagram with lit candles. I told the police my story, I recovered and I was eventually released from the hospital. My parents decided to move to Tarnation Washington, horrified that this had happened. I am now 22 years old, in college studying English. I still have the scars of my experience, both mental and physical. I still have night terrors of that night, awaking in a cold sweat most nights. I cannot handle being outside alone after dark, I can’t sleep unless I have a night light on and I keep a 9 mm pistol under my pillow. They never caught my would-be murderers and I have never told anyone this story before. So why am I telling you? Simple, in case anything should happen to me, I want someone to know what really happened. Most people would just shrug this off as some silly story. I mean, this isn’t something you can tell just anyone. As far as I know, they never caught any members of the people that nearly killed me that night and I have always expected them to try and find me again. Hell, they might end up reading this! Why am I so sure something is going to happen to me? Well, because I came home tonight to see a scorpion engraved on my door.
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